Mechanical Engineering Manager
Zipline · South San Francisco, California, USA ·
- Category
- Management
About Zipline
Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We are on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and essential goods anytime, anywhere. We design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Today, Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries to date, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products.
Our customers include the world’s largest and most prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide delivery from point A to point B as fast as possible. The drone is only 15% of what we’ve built to enable seamless, reliable, global operations.
Our system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back. With more than 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown, Zipline is redefining access to healthcare, consumer products, and food across the globe.
We operate at a global scale and are looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth. Our team is motivated by building systems that have a direct, meaningful impact on people’s lives and by scaling the future of logistics. We are seeking people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record breaking speeds.
About You and The Role
The Long Range Platform brings together aircraft, ground systems, software, manufacturing, and operations in one integrated product. We’re looking for a Mechanical Engineering Manager to set mechanical engineering strategy for the platform and lead the team responsible for mechanical design, from early architecture through production and field use. This leader will connect customer and operator needs with platform strategy, shaping the aircraft and ground systems that make delivery more useful, reliable, and scalable.
This is a strategic player-coach role. You’ll help define product direction and the multi-generation roadmap with Product, Systems, and platform leaders, turning customer problems, field performance, and operating constraints into clear priorities, requirements, and investment choices. You’ll develop engineers and stay close to the work: reviewing designs, working through difficult tradeoffs, and helping the team resolve issues in build, test, and operation. The work spans safety-critical aircraft hardware and ground systems that need to perform reliably in demanding environments and be practical to build, inspect, and maintain at scale.
What You'll Do
- Build and develop an exceptional mechanical engineering team. Set clear ownership and a high bar, give timely, direct feedback, and create an environment where strong engineers can do ambitious work and grow.
- Own mechanical engineering outcomes across the Long Range Platform. Set strategy, priorities, and the multi-generation roadmap, balancing customer value, platform capability, technical risk, investment, staffing, and execution.
- Guide mechanical architecture and design for aircraft structures, mechanisms, powertrain, batteries, avionics packaging, and ground systems.
- Build a deep understanding of customer and operator needs through direct engagement, field observation, and operational feedback. Translate those needs into product requirements, mechanical interfaces, design choices, and validation plans.
- Drive systems engineering across mechanical and platform interfaces: translate customer and operating needs into system-level requirements, lead safety and reliability analyses, and ensure integration, verification, and test plans demonstrate safe performance in real-world conditions.
- Stay technically engaged through design reviews, analysis, prototyping, and testing. Bring the depth to make sound decisions, challenge assumptions, and help the team resolve its hardest problems.
- Lead system-level tradeoffs across safety, weight, performance, reliability, manufacturability, serviceability, cost, and schedule. Surface decisions early and keep the team moving through uncertainty.
- Partner with Product, Electrical, Software, Systems, Integration, Test, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Operations to deliver hardware that works as part of the full system and meets customer needs in real operating conditions.
- Hold a consistent bar for designs validated against real operating conditions, including vibration, thermal exposure, fatigue, wear, handling, and maintenance.
- Move hardware from prototype through qualification, production ramp, and deployment. Remove blockers, make timely decisions, and close the loop on commitments.
- Work with suppliers and manufacturing partners to improve quality, cost, manufacturability, and production readiness.
- Take on difficult design, test, production, and field problems. Lead root-cause investigation, drive corrective action, and verify the resolution.
- Connect the team’s work to the mission and customer impact. Communicate direction with clarity and energy, build buy-in through the team, and reinforce a culture of ownership, technical rigor, and fast learning.
What You'll Bring
Must Have
- Experience building and developing high-performing mechanical engineering teams, including setting priorities and expectations, coaching engineers, giving direct feedback, and creating clear ownership.
- A strong mechanical engineering background, with significant direct technical contributions to complex hardware earlier in your career.
- Track record of translating customer needs into product requirements and engineering roadmaps, and carrying electromechanical products from architecture and design through test, production, and field deployment.
- Technical depth in mechanical systems such as structures, mechanisms, actuators, motors, sensors, and electromechanical integration.
- Strong fundamentals in first-principles analysis, hand calculations, materials, GD&T, tolerance analysis, fatigue, and FEA.
- Experience with prototyping, test planning, validation, and using results to guide design decisions.
- Experience designing for manufacturing, assembly, inspection, reliability, and serviceability.
- A track record of taking ownership across team boundaries, finding practical paths through difficult technical problems, and bringing them to resolution.
- Clear written, verbal, and visual communication skills.
Nice to Have
- Experience applying systems engineering, safety, or verification practices to complex real-world products, such as robotics, aerospace, automotive, or industrial automation.
- Experience with aircraft structures, composite materials, electric powertrains, or battery systems.
- Experience scaling hardware from early builds to production.
- Experience supporting systems in field environments with high reliability and maintenance requirements.
- Experience with Siemens NX.
What Else You Need To Know
The starting cash range for this role is $160,000 - $235,000. Please note that this is a target, starting cash range for a candidate who meets the minimum qualifications for this role. The final cash pay for this role will depend on a variety of factors, including a specific candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, working location, and projected impact. The total compensation package for this role may also include: equity compensation; discretionary annual or performance bonuses; sales incentives; benefits such as medical, dental and vision insurance; paid time off; and more.
Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws or our own sensibilities.
We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!
Voluntary Self-Identification
For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.
As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.